Rabbi Daniel Siegel

Homo Erectus

ואולך אתכם קוממיות

I made you walk/go upright

The significance of Homo Erectus, dated to around 1.9 million years ago, and its place within the evolutionary stages of humankind remains a subject of debate among Paleoanthropologists. Only once does our biblical tradition make reference to Homo Erectus and, as might be expected, within a context and focus differing from that of science.

This week’s parashah, BeChukotai proclaims to our people:

I am the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt (Mitsrayim/narrow places), to be their slaves no more, and broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect (kommimyut).

For our Jewish tradition, Homo Erectus, does speak to how we carry ourselves. But beyond our physical mobility and stature, it addresses our psychological well-being and self-governance. To be Homo Erectus is to be a free ‘man’.

Released from the bonds of Egypt and becoming a covenantal partner with the God of freedom is to stand upright, engaging in dialogue rather than subject to dictate.

Significantly, BeHar the previous parashah, which is read together with BeChukotai, states:

“If your kinsman, due to dire straits, becomes indentured to you, he must not become/be treated as a slave…for they (all of Israel) are my servants, whom I have freed from the land of Egypt (Mitsrayim/ narrow places), they may not sell themselves into slavery.”

To be Homo Erectus is to recognise and foster freedom in fellowship. Thus, moving beyond avdut/ servitude to avodah/service, to become dialogic partners with God and our fellow human beings. Linguist Daniel Everett argues that Homo Erectus (perhaps by virtue of being upright and thereby promoting face-to-face verbal discourse) was the first hominin to evolve the capability of language. 

Recently, when visiting Morocco, I was fortunate to spend some time with the Berbers, whose name derives from Barbary, referring to the Maghreb coast, and is related to the Greek word Barbaria. Barbarian was originally a term connoting non-Greek speakers, indicating people who spoke barbar, an incomprehensible speech and, by extension, an uncivilised people who, no doubt, would benefit from a colonising/‘civilising’ agent. The Berbers call themselves Imazighen, Amazigh meaning ‘free man’. And, as they shared with me, as we sipped tea in the sand dunes of their desert home, they would be forever free as are the winds of the Sahara.

Several times a day, in our morning prayer (right before the Shema) and in Birkat Hamazon we too proclaim our desire to live as a free and independent people:

May the merciful break the yoke from upon our necks and walk us erect (kommimyut) to our land.

(Birkat Hamazon)

 Bring us safely from the ends of the earth and walk us erect (kommimyut) to our land.

(Ahavah Rabbah)

Within the daily prayer, our rabbinic tradition thus linked the freedom of an erect people to a national homeland. The hosts of the land in which our Rabbis and ancestors lived did not fully welcome all equally and fully, standing upright. Today with our State of Israel, may we join together in praying, in the spirit of our parashah, that all inhabitants of Israel encounter each other as free individuals, walking erect in dignity and self-determination.